The Lebanese Prime Minister described this Wednesday as a “crime” the Israeli attack in the suburbs of Beirut, which killed the number two of the Palestinian movement Hamas, considering that it intends to involve Lebanon in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
In a statement released on the social network.
This is the first time since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, which began on October 7, 2024, that Tel Aviv forces have attacked the Lebanese capital.
The clashes between the Israeli Army and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have so far been limited to the border areas of southern Lebanon, when several warnings have been repeated in the Arab world and in the international community about the fear of The conflict spreads in the Gaza Strip, Palestine and other regions of the Middle East.
“We ask the countries involved to pressure Israel to stop attacking,” asked the Lebanese leader, while accusing Israel of resorting to “exporting its failures” in the Gaza Strip to Lebanon’s southern border, with a view to to impose “new realities”. ” of war.
Israel “has not tired of killing and destroying everyone, near and far,” Mikati continued, stating that his country “is committed, as it always has been, to international resolutions” on this conflict.
Later, in a statement, the presidency of the Lebanese Council of Ministers revealed that Mikati ordered the presentation of an urgent complaint to the UN Security Council.
The Lebanese leader “called on the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Bou Habib, to ask him to present an urgent complaint to the Security Council in the context of the flagrant attack on Lebanese sovereignty with the bomb attack that occurred in the southern suburbs of Beirut” . the statement says.
The Israeli authorities have not yet commented on this attack in Beirut.
The number two of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, died today in an Israeli attack in the suburbs of Beirut, the Palestinian Islamist movement revealed on its official channel, Al-Aqsa TV.
According to a Lebanese security official cited by France-Presse, al-Arouri was killed along with his bodyguards in an Israeli attack targeting the Hamas office in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that the resulting explosion from an Israeli drone killed six people.
Al-Arouri was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing and led the Palestinian group’s presence in the West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to kill him even before the current war against Hamas.
In Lebanon since 2018, al-Arouri was detained in Israeli prisons for 12 years before being released in 2010 and is blamed for several attacks against Israel from Lebanese soil.
More recently, he was one of Hamas’s chief negotiators in the release of hostages taken by his group in the October 7 attack on Israel.
A month ago, speaking to Al Jazeera television, he said the remaining prisoners were soldiers or former soldiers and would not be released until Israel ended its attacks on the Gaza Strip.
The most recent conflict between Israel and Hamas was triggered after an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli territory on October 7 of last year, massacring 1,140 people, mostly civilians and including around 400 soldiers, according to official figures. from Tel Aviv.
In retaliation, Israel, which has vowed to eliminate the Palestinian movement, launched a large-scale offensive in the Gaza Strip, where, according to the local government, more than 22,000 people have already died, mostly women, children and adolescents. and injured: more than 57 thousand, mostly civilians.
Most of the territory’s infrastructure is destroyed and around 1.9 million people, according to the UN, are displaced, facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis due to the collapse of hospitals, the outbreak of epidemics and water shortages. drinking, food, medicine and electricity.
Since the start of the war, fighting has only ceased for one week – between November 24 and 30 – in a truce brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, which included the release of 105 hostages held by Hamas in exchange of 240 Palestinian prisoners. and the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
Source: TSF
